Wake
by AuroraExecution
Summary: Yohji is barely himself anymore. All he wants is to be lost in a world of drugged haziness forever, but something holds him back. Pre-Gluhen through Gluhen. Aya/Yohji.


**Disclaimer:** We all know who owns Weiss, and we all know I'm not him.

**Notes: **Thanks to patsch for reading through for me.

I realize, as patsch pointed out, the end is rather abrupt, but I wrote it to flow along Gluhen's storyline, which...pretty much ends just that abruptly. So. The beginning of the fic starts in pre-Gluhen time period. Weiss has been broken up for a while, and it's still before they reform for Gluhen, and before Aya goes to find Yohji in the drama CDs, and finds him a wreck. I did NOT make up the drugs, honest. Please let me know if anything is confusing.

* * *

Wake

He is barely Yohji anymore. All he is now is just an automaton who looks vaguely like Balinese once did.

Not that he wants to sound so self-deprecating.

He is simply tired. Tired of trying, tired of fighting, tired, really, of forcing himself forward.

"_Move!" Omi cries, and Ken shoves him out of the way of the bullet spray. Their fourth cuts down the gunman before he can shoot again. _

And then there is only silence.

Sometimes he wished he could go back, but he wasn't ever really sure. Wasn't sure if he could handle the end again. So he forced himself to move on.

He doesn't care anymore. He isn't vulnerable anymore. All he knows nowadays is cheap perfume and strawberry lip-gloss kisses and the warm fuzz of pills he doesn't remember the names of, and he knows that the haze makes everything softer.

"_I'm sorry, Yohji, but there isn't anything between us worth preserving. We're just assassins." And he left, and Yohji almost cared, but he couldn't remember what he was supposed to care about after six glasses of vodka and a few swigs of sake. _

The drinking helps him forget. He's forgotten everything by now, like how many shots he's had or whether the combination of the red pills and the whiskey will kill him. He's forgotten who it was he was thinking about before the alcohol set in. Mostly, he doesn't care either.

He's better this way. He likes feeling good, and somehow always makes himself feel worse when he bothers. He's never going to learn, no matter if he repeats it in his head or writes it down or tattoos it on his arm. The only way to stop himself is to stop completely. Live in a world of colored tablets and sparkling liquor, with pretty unmemorable girls and their mascara-thick lashes on his cheek.

It's a good life, he tells himself. He's happy, he tells himself.

"_I need you back." And he's not sure who's saying it to whom anymore, because he can't believe that Aya would ever say anything like it. But it's not Aya, because it never is. _

One day, the haze starts to fade, and he is Yohji, so much that it hurts. It's Omi, bringing them back together in some perverse attempt at finding the home they all lost, and for a moment, Yohji hopes.

But Weiss is never kind to its members, and soon they're back to where they were before. He tried, but it didn't work anyway, and he shouldn't have expected it to. For a little bit he hates Omi, blames it on Kritiker, rants over his teammates, but soon he realizes he is the one who signed the contract.

He hates it. Hates the powerless feeling. Hates watching himself struggle futilely as he is dragged backward by a force he can't deny.

"_You shouldn't have brought him back. It's unfair to him."_

"_We need him, Aya. Weiss needs him." _

"_Omi, he's breaking, maybe broken. You didn't see him when I found him."_

And Yohji's not sure whether it's a good thing or not. Omi, who needs him to be there and believes in a person that no longer exists, and Aya, who pities him and is trying to protect him. He doesn't want Aya's pity, and he isn't the one Omi is looking for anymore.

He hates feeling awake. He hates living for real again. He _liked_ his little fantasy world, where all that existed were comfortable soft drug buzzes. He takes out his annoyance on his team, and the only one nearby is Aya. He takes out a lot of things on Aya.

Aya doesn't reply. He never replies. Yohji almost wishes he would for once. It's starting to get tiring.

_I was foolish then, to believe I loved you. I was foolish to let myself care again, and again. I was foolish, and you were too, because you almost thought you were capable of love. _

"I can give you what you want most." And he's desperate, and he's too awake, so he takes it. He forgets why he got the tattoo. Soon, he thinks, he won't remember he has one.

Maybe he should have been smart enough to know that she was offering a lie, but he wanted the lie, so he believed her.

He is desperate enough to do anything to leave himself behind. He wishes he could forget, because he doesn't want to see the trail of shattered half-promises and betrayals. Because someone was supposed to make things all right for him, but it wasn't what either of them thought it would be, and things simply deteriorated from there.

_Sometimes he dreamed of Aya, and he wasn't sure if it was too out of character for Aya to return to him, for Aya to care. Sometimes, but it always felt like he was projecting too far. _

Aya asks him why he's doing this, why he's turned against them. "I'm going to forget, and I won't let you stop me." And Yohji is too far gone in his need to stop living this life. He would do anything, and once he would've done anything for Aya too, but it hadn't been enough for Aya to care.

He doesn't want to live like this because he doesn't like Yohji, and Aya should understand, because _he_ had never liked Yohji either. Not really, not even if he thought he did or pretended he did. They should've both known the truth all along.

Yohji wants the haze and the happiness and the sweet lips, but he's sick of sticky bitter pills and artificially-flavored liquids, and he wants the buzz to never go away.

_He's tired of the memories. He's tired of watching Aya walk away from him every night in his dreams, and he's tired of seeing Aya still around the next day. He's tired, and he almost wishes Aya would stay for once, but somehow he's too tired to care anymore. _

Aya curses at him, tells him he can't let go. Aya, who is real and alive and still there, even if he's nothing to Yohji anymore. Aya, who wanted to shield him, because he thought Yohji didn't deserve to be forced back into the suffering. Aya, who won't let him walk away from himself, no matter how many others have walked away already.

Aya, who he always loved, somehow.

Aya tells him to fight. And he does.

_They had days and weeks and months. Not enough, to be sure, but they had a bit of time together, and Aya might just have loved him a little, in his odd, fervent way. Yohji remembers this, and he never, ever, ever wants to forget again. _

The world is falling. Yohji can't stop it, and even Aya, who Yohji once believed could do anything, can't stop it either. They stare through the crashing architecture at each other, and the background fades. He can hear Omi screaming his name, and Ken is holding the boy back, but all he can think of is Aya's eyes, and the open emotions within them.

'I love you', he calls out, with only his stare, and he knows Aya can see it. "I've chosen to live," he says aloud. Aya approves, of one, of the other, and of Yohji as an entire, beautifully shattered creature.

"Wait for me," Aya replies.

_He left once, painfully, and Yohji remembers, but Aya is promising not to leave him again. Yohji isn't aware of the tears, but he can feel the soreness in his chest. He doesn't want to let go anymore. Maybe he never really did. _

Yohji knows reality, better than anyone. He knows that, after this, Aya might have to go anyway, and maybe they won't have any more of a chance than they ever did. But he knows, too, that he would rather live with the memory of what he's had, because it made him happy, in an excruciating sort of way. He wants to be Yohji now, more than ever, because Aya, who refused to love anyone, may have possibly loved Yohji.

But, as the building collapses, he starts to lose himself. His mind is fading to black, and Yohji holds on desperately, but it's not tight enough, because everything slips away.

The last thoughts are the ones he holds on to the hardest, but even they fade as the world darkens.

_I love…_

_Wait for me…_

_Aya._

(And then he is not Yohji anymore.)


End file.
